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  29 juin 2020 | International, Naval

  Here’s why Britain is struggling to form a fully effective carrier strike group

  By: Andrew Chuter LONDON — Britain's Royal Navy took delivery of two new aircraft carriers, but a government report on the ships achieving operational capability has laid bare some obstacles toward making a fully effective carrier strike group. In a report released June 25, the National Audit Office pointed to delays in developing the Crowsnest airborne early warning radar and contracting to build the logistics ships destined to support the 65,000-ton carriers as ongoing problems for the Royal Navy. The NAO also raised questions about future funding. The Ministry of Defence is making slow “progress in developing the crucial supporting activities that are needed to make full use of a carrier strike group, such as the Crowsnest radar system and the ability to resupply the carriers. In addition, it has not established a clear view on the future cost of enhancing, operating and supporting carrier strike, which creates the risk of future affordability pressures,” the NAO said. Added the head of the watchdog: “The MoD also needs to get a firmer grip on the future costs of carrier strike. By failing to understand their full extent, it risks adding to the financial strain on a defense budget that is already unaffordable.” HMS Queen Elizabeth, the first of two carriers built by British industry in a £4.6 billion (U.S. $5.7 billion) program, is already undertaking extensive sea trials, with its F-35B jets ahead of a planned first deployment next year. The second carrier, HMS Prince of Wales, is also conducting sea trials but is some months behind its sister ship. The warships are not expected to be operated simultaneously. The NAO said the Lockheed Martin-led program to install Crowsnest radars on Royal Navy Merlin helicopters is running 18 months late and will impact how the British carrier strike force is initially deployed. The watchdog said the MoD is working to come up with an acceptable baseline radar by the time HMS Queen Elizabeth undertakes its initial deployment next year. “As at April 2020, the Department [the MoD] expected to achieve initial Crowsnest operating capability in September 2021, some 18 months later than planned,” the NAO reported. “As this is later than the December 2020 milestone for declaring initial operating capability for carrier strike, the Department is working to provide a credible baseline radar capability for the first deployment with the United States in 2021. It expects to recover some lost time to declare full operating capability in May 2023, 11 months later than planned. However, the existing timetable contains no contingency to accommodate any further slippage. The delays will affect how the Department can use carrier strike during this period.” British and U.S. Marine Corps jets will be based on the carrier during its first deployment, partly because the U.K. does not have a sufficient inventory of available jets. Eighteen of the aircraft have so far been delivered for use by the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force Lockheed Martin secured the Crowsnest contract in 2017, with Searchwater radar supplier Thales and helicopter builder Leonardo as subcontractors. Crowsnest is a key element in the protection of the naval strike group, giving air, maritime and land detection and tracking capabilities. The NAO said the delay “has been caused by a subcontractor, Thales, failing to meet its contractual commitments for developing equipment and not providing sufficient information on the project's progress. Neither MoD nor its prime contractor, Lockheed Martin, were aware of these problems until it was too late, reflecting MoD's ineffective oversight of its contract with Lockheed Martin.” A Lockheed Martin UK spokesperson said the company is working to deliver the Crowsnest capability in time for HMS Queen Elizabeth's deployment. “As prime contractor for Crowsnest, we understand the fundamental component that this program delivers to the UK's Carrier Enabled Power Projection. We will continue to ensure that the program develops in line with our requirement to deliver the Crowsnest capability to support the first operational deployment of HMS Queen Elizabeth,” the spokesperson said. “We will work with our industrial partners and the MoD to address any developmental issues which arise, including the deployment of additional resources, if necessary, to maintain program timescales and deliver this critical capability to the Royal Navy.” Thales UK did not respond to Defense News' requests for comment by press time. The NAO partly blames the setbacks for why the MoD faces a “tight timetable” to develop full operating capability for a strike group by 2023. But the watchdog also highlighted the Fleet Solid Support program as another obstacle. The MoD had targeted 2026 for when the first of up to three logistics ships could provide ammunition, food and general stores to the carrier strike group, but that timeline has extended by up to three years as a result of ongoing uncertainty over the schedule to compete and build the vessels operated by the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. The MoD abandoned a competition to build the ships late last year, saying it was concerned about obtaining value for money. At the time, the program was mired in controversy over whether the contract should go to a British shipyard consortium or awarded to a foreign company. That issue remains unresolved. No date has officially been given for restarting the competition. Defence Secretary Ben Wallace told the parliamentary Defence Committee earlier this year that he thinks it will relaunch in September, but that has not been confirmed. Defence Committee Chairman Tobia Ellwood was particularly critical of the failure to provide the necessary support ships, noting that without them, the carriers' capability would be seriously undermined. “It'll be hotched and potched, only available for short operational journeys,” he told the Daily Telegraph on June 26. “It will be for display purposes only, and that's a very expensive toy.” Britain has only one solid support vessel, RFA Fort Victoria, that can replenish a carrier at sea. It entered service in 1994 and is due to retire in 2028, having had its life expectancy extended. The NAO report said the limitations of RFA Fort Victoria would have a knock-on effect to carrier operations. “Having only one support ship with limited cargo capacity slows the tempo and reach at which the Department [the MoD] can replenish a carrier group. In addition, the Department will have restricted options for deploying the carriers for much of 2022 because RFA Fort Victoria will be unavailable due to major planned maintenance work,” the NAO said. Responding to the report, an MOD spokesperson said: ”Carrier strike is a complex challenge, which relies on a mix of capabilities and platforms. We remain committed to investing in this capability, which demonstrates the U.K.'s global role. “Despite the disruptions of COVID-19, the carrier strike group is on track for its first operational deployment.” https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/06/26/heres-why-britain-is-struggling-to-form-a-fully-effective-carrier-strike-group/

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  31 juillet 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  U.S. Air Force Launches Three-Year Fielding Plan For Skyborg Weapons

  Steve Trimble July 07, 2020 The next combat aircraft to enter the U.S. Air Force inventory will not be a manned sixth-generation fighter or even the Northrop Grumman B-21. By fiscal 2023, the Air Force expects to deliver the first operational versions of a new unmanned aircraft system (UAS) called Skyborg, a provocative portmanteau blending the medium of flight with the contraction for a cybernetic organism. The Skyborg family of aircraft is expected to fill an emerging “attritable” category for combat aircraft that blurs the line between a reusable UAS and a single-use cruise missile. July 8 award date for Skyborg contracts Leidos is managing autonomy mission system As the aircraft are developed, Skyborg also will serve as the test case of a radical change in acquisition philosophy, with ecosystems of collaborative software coders and aircraft manufacturers replacing the traditional approach with a supply chain defined by a single prime contractor. The Air Force also plans to manage the Skyborg aircraft differently than other UAS. Although Air Combat Command (ACC) is considering the Skyborg family as a replacement for pre-Block F-16s after 2025 and MQ-9s after 2030, the aircraft is not likely to fit neatly into an existing force structure with dedicated Skyborg squadrons. “Even though we call Skyborg an attritable aircraft, I think we'll think of them more like reusable weapons,” says Will Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics. The Skyborg is an attritable weapon, which means key components such as the jet engine will be designed with a short service life. Credit: AFRL via YouTube The Skyborg propulsion systems—including expendable subsonic and supersonic jet engines—will be rated with a fraction of the service life expected of a fully reusable UAS or manned aircraft. “We'll do whatever number of takeoffs and landings they're ‘spec'd' for, and then we'll attrit them out of the force as targets and just buy them at a steady rate,” Roper says. Starting in fiscal 2023, a concept of operations for a formation of four Lockheed Martin F-22s will include Skyborgs as part of the manned aircraft's load-out. “I expect that the pilots, depending on the mission, [will] decide: Does the Skyborg return and land with them and then go to fight another day, or is it the end of its life and it's going to go on a one-way mission?” Roper explains. In some cases, the pilot may decide a target is important enough that it is worth the loss of a Skyborg, even if its service life has not been used up, he adds. As the concept evolves, a diverse array of Skyborg aircraft designs will likely find roles beyond the air combat community, Roper says. “I don't think it'll just be fighters,” he says. “I think they'll fly with bombers. I think they'll fly with tankers to provide extra defensive capability. That's what I love about their versatility and the fact that we can take risks with them.” Skyborg is often presented as the epitome of the “loyal wingman” concept, in which one or multiple UAS are controlled or managed by a manned aircraft to perform a variety of surveillance, support and strike tasks during a mission. But the aircraft also could have the ability to operate independently of a manned aircraft, with the capability to launch and recover hundreds of such systems without the need for runways or even bases. The Kratos XQ-58A, which achieved first flight in March 2019, is one of several potential members of the Skyborg UAS family. Credit: U.S. Air Force “If [China and Russia] know that they have to target only tens or even hundreds of ports and airfields, we have simplified their problem,” says ACC chief Gen. Mike Holmes. The new class of attritable aircraft, he says, are designed so that “we can still provide relevant high-tempo combat power to be freed up from a runway.” If Skyborg is the future, it begins on July 8. The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is due on the second Wednesday of this month to award a contract to start developing the first in a family of experimental UAS bearing the name Skyborg. The AFRL already has a stable of potential concepts. The Kratos XQ-58A Valkyrie, which has flown four times since March 2019, is the most visible example of the AFRL's Low-Cost Attritable Aircraft Technology platform. Meanwhile, the Low-Cost Attritable Aircraft Platform--Sharing project quietly kept several UAS industry leaders involved in design studies, including Boeing, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc., Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. Each company selected will be awarded a contract with a maximum value of $400 million over a five-year ordering period. But the core of the Skyborg program is the software; specifically, the military aviation equivalent of the algorithm-fed convolutional neural networks that help driverless cars navigate on city streets. In announcing Leidos on May 18 as the Skyborg Design Agent (SDA), the AFRL selected the same company that delivered the software “brain” of the Navy's Sea Hunter unmanned surface vehicle, which navigated from San Diego to Honolulu in 2018. As SDA, Leidos' role is to deliver a software core that uses artificial intelligence to learn and adapt as the aircraft flies. The autonomy mission system core—as integrated by Leidos from a combination of industry and government sources—will be inserted into multiple low-cost UAS designed by different companies, with each configured to perform a different mission or set of missions. That is how the Skyborg program is set up today, but that is not how it started. Roper created the original “Skyborg” term and concept when he led the Strategic Capabilities Office within the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 2012-17. Roper transferred Skyborg to the AFRL, where it was renamed Avatar. A year after taking over Air Force acquisition in 2017, Roper changed the name back to Skyborg and created a program office in October 2018. In March 2019, Roper revealed the Skyborg concept to a group of reporters a week before the AFRL issued the first request for information to industry about the program. At that time, Skyborg was still organized more traditionally, with plans to select a single contractor to serve as a prime integrator. By early 2020, program officials reorganized Skyborg into modular hardware and software subcomponents built on an open architecture that requires no prime integrator. As the acquisition strategy has evolved, so has the Air Force's thinking about how to use the Skyborg family of systems. “The whole idea was [that] the contested environment is going to be challenging, it's going to be uncertain, and so it makes the most sense to have something that doesn't have a pilot in it to go into the battlefield first,” Roper says. “But once you agree that's a self-evident operational concept, it opens up the door for a lot of nontraditional thinking for the Air Force.” After a 2-3 year experimental phase, the AFRL plans to deliver an early operational capability in fiscal 2023. Follow-on operational Skyborgs could be funded within the Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) project or through a separate program of record. The Skyborg concept even has links to the Air Force's architecture for the Advanced Battle-Management System (ABMS). “Attritable-ONE,” which is defined as having “multirole attritable capabilities,” is one of about 30 product lines in the ABMS architecture. “Skyborg and the AttritableONE teams are closely coordinated for planning and collaboration purposes,” the AFRL informed industry in response to questions about the Skyborg solicitation. The aircraft supplier must deliver a highly flexible design. Leidos, the design agent, will provide the autonomous mission system that will serve as the pilot, flight control computer and mission systems operator for the aircraft. But the “size, weight, power and cooling details for the Skyborg core autonomy system have not been finalized,” the AFRL told the bidding companies. “The majority of the system will be software-based and integrate with the sensors onboard the host aircraft,” the AFRL says. “Extensive collaboration between the Skyborg system design agent and the participants in this [contract] is expected.” https://aviationweek.com/ad-week/us-air-force-launches-three-year-fielding-plan-skyborg-weapons

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  21 septembre 2023 | International, Aérospatial

  UK mulls onboard sensing requirements for satellites

  The policy could be included as part of a forthcoming Space Sector Plan that outlines opportunities to boost the U.K. space economy and promote resilience.